religion – Mind Journeys

A Distinctive Australian Spirituality?

Wayne Hudson, Australian Religious Thought,
Clayton, VIC: Monash University Publishing, 2015
ISBN (pb): 978-1-922235-76-3
ISBN (e-book): 978-1-922235-77-0

From $AU32 online,
$32 e-book (limited free access online at nla.gov.au)

In Western Australian and Australian public library systems.

Reviewed by Ted Witham

Richard Dawkins once dismissed Genesis 22 as ‘an infamous tale’; he thought that Abraham’s actions as at the least, were ‘child abuse, ‘and if he had actually carried through his plan to sacrifice Isaac, we would have convicted him of first degree murder.’ [1]

I thought it a great pity that Professor Dawkins, who writes so eloquently on biology, missed the fact of 3,000 years of complex thought and interpretation of the Binding of Isaac that rabbis and Christian scholars have recorded. Any good scientist would not regard his experiment as the truth without taking into account the work of scientists before him. Einstein built on Newton. He certainly didn’t ignore him!

In fact, Dawkins’ hero, Charles Darwin waited 15 years before publishing On the Origin of Species. It wasn’t that Darwin doubted his findings: on the contrary, Darwin respected the fact that others had given serious thought to these topics, churchmen and enlightenment figures alike, and had come to different conclusions. Added to that the concern that Darwin had about publishing theories that would appear to deny the evangelical Christianity of his wife Emma, and Darwin’s very different attitude to Dawkins’ is revealed.

Wayne Hudson’s wide-ranging survey of Australian religious thought from 1788 until today shows that we are like Richard Dawkins in our inability to see the richness of religious writings in our country.

According to the publisher’s blurb Australian Religious Thought is ‘the first major survey of this field.’ Wayne Hudson is a Professor in the Centre for the History of European Discourses at the University of Queensland. He is widely read in history, theology, philosophy and literature from 18^th Century Europe and on through Australian European settlement. From this store of intellectual life, he shows the surprising amount of religious writings that have been produced in Australia. He is generous about the quality of distinctive Australian theology, but demonstrates that religious thought is much wider than Christian theology.

Dr Hudson explores six themes in writings about the sacred: Shapes of Disbelief, Sacral Secularity, Religious Liberalism, Religious Thought and Philosophy, Theology in Development, and Postsecular Consciousness. His book aims at the general reader, and most readers will applaud the extraordinary range of references. There may have been a cost factor in the decision not to include a formal bibliography which would have added another third to the size of the volume!

I particularly appreciated the ways in which Australian writers have stretched the concept of God. I recently reviewed Lorraine Parkinson’s new book, Made on Earth, which argues that the divinity of Jesus was not intended by the Gospel writers and so we can discount the doctrine of the Trinity. The joy of Australian Religious Thought is to discover that this is not a new heresy in 2016. Hudson quotes Charles Strong founder of the Australian Church who was a proponent of this view from early in the 20^th Century. In addition, he traces the proposition back to German historian Adolph von Harnack and celebrity missionary Albert Schweitzer.

Hudson laments the lack of sources showing the impact Aboriginal spiritualities have had on the wider culture, but explores sufficient writers to prime my curiosity.

He suggests that, far from simple secularity, Australians are developing a distinctive religious sensibility. Its nature is partly encompassed in the phrase ‘sacral secularity’. For me, as a Christian reader, this book was like being in a closed room and suddenly having the doors thrown open to disclose a far bigger house. It is good to have more light stream in even as I continue to regard my room as my home.

The book will appeal to all Australians seriously interested in the development of distinctive Australian culture.

—–o0o——

[1] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, London: Random House, 2006, 265

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Education, Education, Education!

First published on the Starts at Sixty website, June 12, 2015

Kids join Islamic State (ISIS) because they are hungry for a passion. In the grey world created for them by their adults, they want something exciting to believe in, some dramatic good they can achieve, something great they can create, a cause to give their whole life to. Of course they do. They are adolescents.

And they are also ignorant.

Teenagers these days know so many things, and they can google what they don’t know, but we have failed them dismally in teaching them about religion and about the religions expressed in cultures around the world. For various reasons, we have been afraid to have any religion taught in schools, and yet this is the very learning area that would prevent the radicalisation of young people.

I mean, of course, religion taught well, and taught by competent teachers. This is so urgent as to be the fourth ‘R’ of the 21^st Century: young people need to know about religion alongside reading, writing and ‘rithmetic.

They need to know why billions have embraced religion and found that religion provides wisdom, comfort and direction for their lives. They need to know what motivated Mother Theresa of Calcutta, and what produced the luscious religious art of the Renaissance. In a word, they need to know something of the passion, commitment and engagement in life that religion brings to many people.

They also need to know why millions reject religion. Religion is not just passion. It’s not just a response of the heart. It requires thought and discernment as well. Agnostics have reasons for questioning, and atheists have reasons for believing that religions have got it wrong, and students need to grapple with those reasons and see if they too are convinced.

It’s our fault that our young people don’t know about religion, don’t know its complexities, don’t know how rule of law, democracy, and science all came about through the work of devout Jews, Christians and Muslims, and how the modern world could not have come into existence without religion.

Eid – a time of joy and peace for families after the fasting of Ramadan

They have not been introduced to the proposition that morality, morality like reverence for life, arises from the pages of the scriptures of the great religions.

It’s our fault as a community. Rectifying that error will not be easy. When he was Minister for Education forty years ago, Kim Beazley Senior proposed a National Curriculum with nine Learning Areas, one of which was Religion. He foresaw that Religion needs firstly to be taken seriously as a curriculum area.

Countries such as Denmark that seem to be doing better in embracing minorities, including Muslims, are currently strengthening their ‘identity-carrying subjects’ such as history and Christian studies. Australia will get a similar result through serious teaching about all religions.

Politicians, principals and academics should publicly champion the teaching of Religion Studies as a national priority.

The Year 11 and 12 courses that now exist like ‘Religion and Life’ in WA need boosting into greater visibility in order to create a bigger demand.

We need to identify competent teachers to mentor other teachers who, though highly trained in other areas, feel inadequate to teach religion. There are such master teachers, particularly in church schools and in professional associations like the Australian Association for Religious Education.

Universities should review teacher training programs to make sure that they prepare teachers thoroughly to teach Religion. Sadly, the Universities I know have dropped successful courses because administrators have been indifferent. That should change!

The aim should be to make the teaching and learning of Religion as engaging and fascinating as religion – and the debates about it – are.

Schools need to make sure that there is sensible space in the time-table for Religion. Students cannot take seriously a subject that is allowed only 45 minutes a week. Imagine if Science or Maths had only one period in a week! ISIS has had runaway success in meeting its educational aims. As a community we can do better than ISIS.

In other words, our community needs a plan to end the ignorance by creating and nurturing a new, a ninth, Learning Area. Every student who sees through the extremism of ISIS because she learns that Islam is something different altogether is a treasure saved for Australia.

Ted Witham is Immediate Past President of the Australian Association for Religious Education and a retired Religious Educator.

Keeping alive the rumour of God

One of the few vestiges of “Establishment” in the Anglican Church of Australia is the authority of clergy to act as Commissioners for Declarations. [This authority is unlikely to be withdrawn as it is one of the requirements of Marriage Celebrants.] Several times a year fellow residents of our retirement village ask me to witness their signatures on legal documents. I am glad to oblige. I have even had a stamp made to save me from having to write by hand “The Reverend Edward Peter Witham, Registered Minister of Religion W-ZZZZ.

As a CD, my responsibility is to witness that people have correctly signed their documents. For that I need to know the form of the document – will, passport photo, statutory declaration, bank business, etc. – but not the content. However, most people when they come to sign want to share the background to the document. For my part, I assure them of confidentiality.

So people in the Village do know now that I am a priest – or at least, a handy person for witnessing their signature!

However, when we moved into this village five years ago, we decided we would downplay our faith. We had heard an anecdote about one of the village owners who apparently declared that a public area in the Village Centre would be ideal “for Bible Study or the like”. This remark evoked a strong reaction, almost outrage, among some people.

We thought that if there are people outraged by the thought of Bible study, being public Christians in the village could be counter-productive.

We have discovered the other church-goers in the Village, and we encourage one another in conversation and with cards at Easter and Christmas. We continue all our practice of Christianity outside the Village, both in church attendance and in our involvement in the Franciscan Third Order.

But I treat the Village as though it were a country where wearing distinctive religious garb is banned. I have only once worn my dog-collar in the Village or twice, if you count my performance as the Vicar in the murder mystery one year! I rarely advertise church events within the Village, and if I do, I do it discreetly.

Our stance of being so coy about our faith has been challenged. Once a colleague at church loaned us a DVD of a Passion Play performed in the gardens of Government House. We watched it in our house. When we returned the DVD to our friend, he asked why we had not had a public showing of it in the Village cinema. That was his idea of evangelism. I tried to explain that it might be seen, in our Village, not as an invitation to the Gospel but as an intrusion.

Inspired by Charles de Foucauld and the Little Brothers and Sisters of Jesus, we just try to keep alive the idea of God in our village. The challenge in that is to evangelise simply by presence requires great holiness. If I am not steeped in prayer, and if my lifestyle lacks integrity and sacrifice, then keeping my Christianity quiet in our relatively benign environment may just be an excuse not to talk about Jesus Christ at all.

I am encouraged that people ask me to witness them signing legal documents, and in doing so, to witness something of their trials and difficulties, but, as Lent begins, I am conscious that I have to use my praying and my decisions to be more transparent to God and the Gospel. Brother Charles de Foucauld has set a very high standard!

Christians need more than tolerance

The Government intends to make no changes to the exemptions for religious organisations in employing people. Today the Australian Christian Lobby’s Jim Wallace boasted that the Prime Minister told him that she will not change these exemptions. Hardly something to boast about: the idea that the churches have a right to discriminate is arrogant and disappointing.

Secular views on tolerance may seem closer to a genuine Christian position. Jeff Sparrow assumes that the exemption is essentially against homosexuals in religious schools and hospitals. This commentator notes, “What message does this legislative loophole send, other than that discrimination against gays and lesbians doesn’t matter as much as other forms of bigotry? It’s a statement that homophobia is still OK; that gays and lesbians can still be bullied and harassed, in a way that wouldn’t be tolerated in respect of anyone else.” (Jeff Sparrow, “Religious Freedom Beats Your Rights at Work”, http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4467310.html?WT.svl=theDrum, 16 January 2013.)

Many Christians have more sympathy for this than for Mr Wallace’s position. But for Christians it is essentially an empty position; a position which is nothing more than opposition to the ACL and groups like it.

I believe that churches should aspire to a higher standard than the community’s. Jesus included the unacceptable, the unclean and the immoral: the women who had had five relationships, the Roman centurion (and his ambiguously described ‘lad’), tax collectors and prostitutes. We should actively embrace many more people than a typical corporation. Mr Wallace believes some people should be excluded. I cannot defend that view. But Mr Sparrow’s view that no-one should be excluded comes nowhere near the Gospel paradigm that everyone should be included.

That there should be no discrimination is a secular standard, the best we can agree on in a diverse society. But the Church seeking to include every last person requires much more moral effort, and indeed, demands that we be receptive to much more of God’s grace.

We Christians should welcome any move to remove the exemptions for religious organisations. The church should be pleased in this case to submit to secular virtue.

Whether or not the law changes, Christian employers should choose to act according to higher standards and be as inclusive as possible. Of course, the specifics of each employment decision do not simply flow automatically from the principle of maximum inclusion; Christian employers must still wrestle with CVs and references to match the best person for each job. But I believe maximum inclusion is closer to the Gospel, and will be seen in our complex society as closer to the Gospel. We Christians are not merely tolerant, as the Government claims to be; we follow the Lord who is “loving unto every man and woman”. (Psalm 145:9)

Sing a new song to the Lord

Hymns – traditional hymns – have sculpted my theological and spiritual landscape. I’m happy to worship with Dan Schutte (“Holy Darkness‘), Graham McKendrick (‘Beauty for Brokenness’), George Bullock (‘The Power of Your Love‘), and all the other contemporary praise-singers, but they have not dripped steadily, obsessively and repetitively into my heart over 60 and more years as hymns have done.

There was a time in my life when I knew the number of every hymn in Hymns Ancient & Modern Revised. If I saw the number 372 on a bus or number plate, I would immediately think ‘Almighty, Invisible, God only Wise’, and often involuntarily blurt it out – to the amusement of friends.

Many hymns have been with me since childhood. I remember beefing out ‘For Those in Peril on the Sea’ (A&MR 165) at Tambellup Primary School Anzac Day services, and singing – very slowly, with my Mum on the harmonium, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ (A&MR 160) in the little church of St Mary in Tambellup.

But there are other hymns that I remember by the person who introduced me to them: Irvin Phillips, organist extraordinaire at St Matthew’s, Armadale, thought my repertoire was incomplete without the tune ’Lucius’ and the lovely words of community that accompany it: ‘All praise to our redeeming Lord, // who joins us by his grace, // and bids us, each to each restored, // together seek his face.’ (TiS 442(i)).

David Overington, my mentor in the Franciscan Third Order, was surprised I did not know the tune ‘Blaenwern’. Together in Song suggests that we should sing ‘What a friend we have in Jesus’ to ‘Blaenwern’,(TiS 590) and, David was right, it adds a depth to that old crusade song that you don’t find with the usual tunes. David also recommended singing ‘Once to every man and nation // comes the moment to decide’ to this tune; and it certainly gives the words a drive towards decision that the curly Welsh tune ‘Ton y Botel’ lacks.

Michael Pennington, Rector of Applecross when I was his curate, introduced me to Samuel Stanley’s great hymn of re-dedication: ‘O thou who camest from above // the pure celestial fire to impart…’ Michael chose it for the 25^th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood, now 15 years ago. It deeply touched my own determination to continue as a priest, offering my life as a sacrifice and knowing that service brings its own reward. ‘Still let me guard the holy fire,// and still stir up the gift in me, // ready for all thy perfect will.’ (TiS 527)

I probably will never know the depth of spirituality that hymns have given me. I will continue to explore new worship music, and I will try to give new life, by giving new words, to old tunes. But it is the old hymns I credit with sustaining my faith through difficulties (‘Great is your faithfulness,’ – TiS 154) and joys (‘Hail thee festival day’, or ‘Christians, lift up your hearts’ in TiS – 423).

May the Lord grant me the joy of continuing to sing hymns; I do hope that they will be one of the options for praise in the eternal worship of the saints.

The Nine Lives of India’s Religions

William Dalrymple, Nine lives: in search of the sacred in modern India, Knopf 2010.
Hardcover 304 pages. Approx. $27 posted from online stores.
Reviewed by Ted Witham
Published in REJA, the journal of the Australian Association for Religious Education, Volume 21, No. 2, 2010

I took my first tentative steps in teaching Indian religion 30 years ago. I still remember my confusion: I learned lists of Four Noble Truths and Eight Right Pathways; I rehearsed the story of Gautama’s enlightenment to tell in class; I read about Shiva and Ganesh. But I couldn’t sort out why some Buddhists are effectively atheists, while others worship the Buddha as a god. I didn’t understand how Hindus appeared to worship hundreds of gods while the text books said there was one, or perhaps three, gods in Hinduism.

No doubt I passed on my confusion to my students. I could have done with Dalrymple’s engaging book then.

Only many years later I learned that “Buddhism” and “Hinduism” were effectively the creation of 19th Century English and German scholars, who had only recently classified Islam and Judaism as “religions”. These scholars cast their eyes across the practices of the teeming shrines of South Asia looking for religious systems. Not surprisingly, they saw what they were looking for and used the suffix “-ism” to describe them.

As Dalrymple knows, the reality is much more complex, and much more interesting, than can be contained in the religion scholars’ enthusiasm for classification. William Dalrymple is a travel writer living in India. He has a particular interest in religious practice. These are the Nine Lives of nine exceptional holy women and men up and down the country.

This approach achieves three things: first, it personalises what might otherwise be abstract notions of religion. We meet articulate people who know what they believe. With his travel writer’s eye for detail, Dalrymple sets these extraordinary sages in their setting, and allows them to tell their stories. All have found that it has cost dearly to pursue the holy.

Second, it allows Dalrymple the opportunity to describe faith-worlds of the “lay” folk who still flock to the shrines and their holy people. The 2,500 year old practices of India are not dead. Who knows how many of their proverbial “nine lives” they have had?

Third, it helps the Western reader build a picture of the lived reality of Hindus, Buddhists and Jains. It shines a light on the difference between a Tamil Buddhist in India’s south and a Tibetan monk in Dharamsala. It lets us see practitioners in many shrines as they intertwine Islamic and Hindu practices and ideas. It describes particularly Indian Sufis, and it shows the pressure the Saudis are placing on them to conform to the austere Wahabbi interpretation of the Qur’an.

Teachers of religion will find this book to be a treasure. Some may use the nine sections of the book to structure a term’s work and allow students to experience the same discovery as the reader. Year 12 and university students could read each chapter in preparation for a class discussion. To use the book in this way for younger students would require more structuring.

Others will be enriched by the contemporary update of their understanding of Indian religions. Others, like me, will recognise how India is not a confusion of spiritualities, but a vibrant, and fascinating, profusion of faith and ritual.

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Ted Witham is the Immediate Past President of AARE. He taught religion in Anglican schools and at Murdoch University. Now retired, he lives in the south-west of Western Australia, where there appears to be minimal religious diversity.